Rosie O’Donnell Voted Worst Talk Show Host

As the host of the syndicated ‘Rosie O’Donnell Show’ in the ’90s, and later as a moderator on ABC’s ‘The View,’ actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell has unquestionably been one of the more successful talk show hosts in recent history.

Asked to name their least favorite talk show host, users at the popular poll site SodaHead selected O’Donnell by a wide margin, giving her 61 percent of the vote. Tied for a distant second, with a mere 11 percent, were Jerry Springer and Star Jones.

In O’Donnell’s defense, the poll choices were somewhat limited, and didn’t include some of the more ignominious failures and spectacular flameouts in talk show history. Chevy Chase, Joan Rivers, Magic Johnson and Morton Downey, Jr. were just a few of the names left off the list.

Instead, O’Donnell went head-to-head with a mostly current crowd, competing with Dr. Phil, Wendy Williams, Jerry Springer, Star Jones, Jenny Jones and Pat Sajak, whose late-night talk show lasted just over a year.

O’Donnell’s tumultuous tenure on ‘The View’ and her propensity for publicly feuding with fellow celebrities (such as Donald Trump) has made her a somewhat divisive figure in recent years, and her new series ‘The Rosie Show’ airs on Oprah Winfrey’s struggling OWN Network, making it unlikely that she’ll return to the top of the ratings.

She remains optimistic, however. As she remarked in the days before ‘The Rosie Show’ debuted, “I think when people see me back in their living rooms every night, they’re going to remember and say, ‘Oh, I liked her.’ And I think any kind of preconception or media-conjured negativity is not going to be a part of it.”